Untold Stories of Me: Episode Five (Oluwatomisin)

Her name was Oluwatomisin, a dark skinned beauty that stood at 5″7 tall, bulgy eyes and had the best of smiles. Was respected by fellow colleagues and staff because of her poise and attitude towards work. She was effective and diligent that her supervisor would leave her to make decisions in his place, I envied that part of her.

“Good morning, I’m here for an internship placement”, I said. “Okay, we have a vacancy at the moment but you’d have to write the aptitude test, are you ready?”, she asked. “Yes please, I’m ready”… “Alright then, come with me”. That was our first meeting.

she was the intern in charge of recruitment, every employee that came into the company had to go through her. “Hello, good morning. Is this Alexa Sanya? “. “Yes this is Alexa Sanya speaking”… “Right, my name is Tomisin calling you from AMF, you wrote an aptitude test last week and you passed. We’d like to invite you for an interview on Friday scheduled for 11:00am”…

“Oh wow! Thank you, I’d be there, thank you very much”. “You’re welcome”. That was the first time we spoke over the phone.

I got the internship placement and resumed work. Soon we got to know each other and realised that we had so much in common, we’d come to work together in the morning sometimes, went home together most times. We’d buy and share our food with each other, even exchanged clothes. When we had a disagreement, we’d cuss each other out without filter. She was like the sister I never had, until that fateful day, October 20th, 2017.

“Oluwatomisin, let’s go home now, it’s almost six”, I said to her. “I don’t feel like going home early today, I want to stay a little longer”, she replied. “Are you for real? Don’t forget we’re still coming to work tomorrow, we need to go home and rest, especially you”.

It was a Friday and we were supposed to come to work the following day, Saturday, to come and sort out files in the department. I didn’t see any reason why we needed to stay back. “Okay, okay, I’ve heard you let me finish up then we can leave”.

After about 10 minutes, we were already making our way out of the office building to the junction where we’ll take a bike. There was no bike at the the junction so we had to wait. I suggested a different route but she didn’t agree to go saying it was too far. I grudgingly agreed to wait for a bike because I didn’t want to leave her.

After about 15 minutes of waiting, a bike came. We waved him to where we stood, negotiated prices and mounted the bike, she sat between me and the bike rider. Our journey started. We were having side talks as the bike man sped off through the busy road. She was confiding in me her worries and how tired she was on the job. I consoled her and told her to hold on just a little longer and she’d be done with her internship.

There was a truck coming right beside us and the bike man was still speeding, ignoring the truck. We shouted at him to slow down but her turned deaf ears. The said truck was trying to avoid a pothole and the bike man was also trying to overtake the truck while trying to avoid the pothole when it happened. Amidst our wailing and shouting at the bike man, we were hit.

How I jumped off the bike to the other side still remains a mystery to me. It was screams, clashes and then silence. After jumping off and running a few feet from the scene, I turned back to check for my friend but she wasn’t behind me, instead she was lying by the roadside.

I shakily went to where she was, knelt down beside her and tried to move her body, but she was clearly unconscious, lying in a pool of blood. “Tomisin, Oluwatomisin”, I called out her name, my voice trembling but there was no response… I watched more blood flow out of her into the road. That was it, Tomisin is dead, Oluwatomisin is dead…